Mid-winter and days that are short, cold and dark fail to diminish the glow of a City Rail Link project that has changed beyond recognition in 12 breath-taking months.
As our financial year draws to a close, we’re a project at peak production forging ahead; one successfully managing the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic; one that can demonstrate significant contributions to a more vibrant and sustainable Auckland.
Hard mahi by many is responsible for real progress and our construction sites are unrecognisable from a year ago.
Hitting peak production at all CRL sites has seen the project’s workforce increase from an early estimate of 1600 to around 2000. At Mt Eden, some 25 pieces of big and busy machinery, not counting our Tunnel Boring Machine, Dame Whina Cooper, were in action – a ‘heavy metal’ reminder of project pace and progress.
Anticipation marked the start of our financial year with the arrival from China of the TBM. Its reassembly, the generous support from Dame Whina’s whānau at the machine’s public unveiling, the recommissioning and official launch, and the start of tunnel excavation came together to mark a pivotal and symbolic shift away from critical years of enabling works to a new focus on construction - building the tunnels and stations and installing the rail systems.
The start of tunnel excavation into central Auckland underlines a year for a project that is up and running and starting to take shape, above and below ground.
I’m indebted to the commitment shown by the Link Alliance, the project’s main contractor, during a challenging year where covid continued to cast its long shadow. The agility demonstrated by the Link Alliance to adapt to new covid-related working conditions was a significant contributor to the year’s advances.
Importantly, we put one of the final pieces of the construction programme into place when we and the Link Alliance put our signatures to contract variations covering redevelopment work around Mt Eden Station, and the installation of rail systems.
Despite the demands thrown up by covid, CRL is tracking well. We’ll have a more definitive view in late 2022 when tunnel excavations are finished, and station construction is substantially completed.
As we shifted construction up a gear, elsewhere Aucklanders were given a glimpse of the benefits a completed CRL will deliver.
In downtown Auckland, the city’s historic Chief Post Office resumed its role as the ‘front door’ to the Britomart Transport Centre after four years of City Rail Link-related closure, innovative construction.